The last kitchen garden lesson for this year: how to make your small food garden winter-ready. First you take out all the plants with their roots. That is very important. The plant of the fresh mint is a real usurer and had roots all over the place. They were very hard to take out.

You can choose to leave your kitchen garden open to try to grow winter veggies, but my intuition tells me that these will not grow in the circumstances I live in. It gets really cold and windy in my garden, because there are only open fields around it.

After taking out all the old plants, just shuffle everything around. I love digging in the ground, it gives you a great feeling of taking care of mother nature: she took good care of us during the whole summer by bringing me these lovely fresh vegetables, now I take good care of her.

I left this for a couple of days so that the air could reach into the ground, but then I saw that the cats in my neighbourhood loved this as well. Luckily they did not leave anything behind there ;). So I covered it all up with the autumn leaves that were left behind in my garden, as if they were saying: use us! We are here to help you! This way we can really understand the communication of nature with us. Everything is re-usable! It is the circle of life and death: samsara. We just have to learn to listen to her messages.

In spring next year when I use the kitchen garden again, I will cover it with a new layer of fresh organic soil, so that new plants can grow again. But for now, she can rest and recover.

Namasté.

]]>IMG_8239janayitribrahmandaStuffed mini-paprikahttps://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/11/25/stuffed-mini-paprika/
Sun, 25 Nov 2018 14:36:20 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5371More Stuffed mini-paprika]]>These lovely petit sweat peppers, I found on the market place. I find them an awesome Sattvic snack, which fits the yoga diet perfectly: raw food is the best you can eat. It contains a lot of the live-giving energy prana.

The goal of eating our food (and of every yoga practice) is to clean our inner energy, and that is possible with pure, natural food, like organic fruits, veggies and fresh water. That makes our food as important as doing asanas, pranayama and meditation.

I filled these paprika’s with soft goat cheese, some spicy chili and a leave of fresh basil. A perfect appetiser with for example some cherry tomatoes and cashew nuts: healthy is fun and delicious! Without the chili it could be a nice snack for the kids too.

Have a lovely Sunday afternoon.

]]>IMG_8175janayitribrahmandaStir-fried pumpkin with feta and raisinshttps://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/10/25/stir-fried-pumpkin-with-feta-and-raisins/
Thu, 25 Oct 2018 09:21:28 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5357More Stir-fried pumpkin with feta and raisins]]>This delicious pumpkin dish was made in 15 minutes and has only 4 ingredients. It is healthy, light, low carb and full of the necessary daily vitamins and minerals. And it fits the Sattvic yoga-diet perfectly.

First you peal the pumpkin (if it is a butternut pumpkin this would not be necessary) and slice it into small cubes. Stir-fry them in coconut oil with some cinnamon, cumin powder, chili powder, ginger and Himalaya salt. The trick to make this dish absolutely fabulous, is to extinguish it with small amounts of strong veggie broth while stir-frying. Don’t make it too much, the liquid has to evaporate. Try the pumpkin and if it is still to dry: add some more broth. Eventually, the pumpkin has to be soft and juicy, but also a little bit crispy from the inside, because then the precious prana is conserved. If it is overcooked, the pumpkin gets too soft and it will taste very dry. So this dish is quick, but quite hard to make. Just try it a couple of times to get is right, it is definitely worth the effort.

When the pumpkin is soft, crispy and juicy enough, you add the raisins and pieces of feta-cheese. Shuffle everything a couple of times but not too much, then the feta keeps its nice form while melting into the vegetables. Finish with a lot of fresh coriander and enjoy this lovely dish! Serve with some light lettuce, avocado and cucumber for example, or if you want it to be a little bit more heavy: it tastes lovely with some bulgur or couscous. Bon apetit!

]]>IMG_7598janayitribrahmandaIMG_7598.jpgAutumn is coming: find happiness withinhttps://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/10/24/autumn-is-coming-find-happiness-within/
Wed, 24 Oct 2018 12:38:49 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5329More Autumn is coming: find happiness within]]>Days are getting shorter. More clouds are coming. My garden is becoming less green and more colorful. The last buds of the gerbera are coming out. Birds are busy preparing for winter. I took out the last useful bits of my kitchen garden. Beans will not grow any further, the courgette plant has just some leaves and old flowers left, and the green tomatoes will not turn red anymore: therefor they would need more sunshine.

Autumn is coming and this is a natural part of nature. We have to accept everything in life as it is. That gives inner rest. Prepare yourself for winter as well as nature does and try to think of ways to find happiness within: during summer when we are a lot outside and well receiving sunshine, especially our last warm summer, our love-tanks are filled with fresh prana constantly. While in this time of the year, we are more inside the house with a lot less sunshine.

The first thing you can do, is take some extra vitamine D: that helps our mood and cold stiff muscles. The yoga-diet is all about moving with your surroundings and circumstances. Eating winter veggies helps us big time during cold days: mother nature gives us everything we need at any specific moment, we can trust her intelligence to give us what’s best for us during every season. Thought this time of the year, it is advisable to take extra good care of ourselves with some food supplements like wheat grass and moringa for all the important vitamins, minerals and of course chlorofyll.

Besides aligning and fine tuning our diet, best thing to do is to meditate, do yoga postures and pranayama to refill our system with prana. That gives instant happiness and fills our love-tanks: love is not to be found outside but only inside of you. Your own soul is love and happiness, you just have to tune into it during deep silence and a state of samadhi. That’s it. There you’ll find love and happiness. Many people try to find it in experiences, materials, romances and other persons (a partner or even their own children), but this is not the right way: real happiness and true love can only be found within. If you find it there you will never depend on outside resources to feel happy or loved anymore. Wishes and desires will fade away, and that gives inner peace and connects you to the higher energy.

Still it is important to make sure you create a nice and clean atmosphere in your home, with candlelight, some nice incense and good calming music: this helps you to even go deeper during dhyana or meditation. Personally I am looking forward to the colder days: they let my inner warmth shine even more.

I wish you all a great autumn and blissful winter! Don’t forget to make long walks outside and enjoy the wonders of nature. When you connect with nature and its elements which is full of prana, your own energy tunes into the same vibration and is getting an instant refill.

]]>IMG_7642janayitribrahmandaIMG_7627.jpgIMG_7622.jpgNow is the time to meditate: Happy Navratri 2018!https://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/10/18/now-is-the-time-to-meditate-happy-navratri-2018/
Thu, 18 Oct 2018 09:08:49 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5320More Now is the time to meditate: Happy Navratri 2018!]]>Every person who practices yoga or meditation should meditate today: this is the best moment of coming into a deep meditative state of samadhi. That is because of the strong light at the end of the nine days celebrations of the Goddess Ma Durga. It all started with her: she is the life-giving force. She is prana. She is God. And it all ends with her after self-realization, enlightenment or better to say moksha. When we reach our ultimate goal of life, we become her, we become unconditional love. We need our full strength to get there: life is a path of learning, falling down, crawling up and getting out all evil and darkness, so that light and love can prevail. The stories of Ma Durga show us that only female force and unconditional love can lit up darkness: it will disappear only with the light of love. Durga stands for this proces of cleaning ourselves; our bodies, minds and souls in a way that we can merge with her. We become her, by turning into love. Today is the 9th day of Durga Puja or Navratri and you can feel her presence while you are silently sitting in nature or doing a deep meditation: her light is shining strongly so that you can easily reach out to her! Just sit and feel. Happy Navratri! Happy Dasara! Happy Dussehra!

]]>IMG_7431janayitribrahmandaIMG_7431.jpgBreaking with old patternshttps://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/10/07/breaking-with-old-patterns/
Sun, 07 Oct 2018 13:21:00 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5309More Breaking with old patterns]]>We all have them: those patterns we want to break with. Like unhealthy eating habits or constantly putting ourselves down in our thoughts ‘I can’t wear this, I am too fat’ or ‘I am never capable of doing that’. These are normal patterns which we have formed throughout our whole lives. All our life-experiences influence our inner energy.

According to the Bhagavad Gita, control over our thoughts and senses is a straight ticket to love and happiness: when we have our thoughts, words and actions on one line, we are a wholesome person in balance. For that we need to have controle over our inner energy and habits or patterns.

When our inner energy is beautiful, we attract happy experiences form the outer world. For that we need to break with all kinds of negative patterns. We cannot really help we have them; most of the time emotional experiences or traumas in our childhood or youth are the cause of them. We don’t have control over that, but we can overwin those internalized patterns we have today, ourselves. Without outside help.

Affirmations

First of all you have to start with affirmations: positive thoughts. Best thing is to do these in front of the mirror. Tell yourself at least 5 times every day that you love yourself just as you are. When you look in the mirror say out loud: ‘I love you!’

Positive thoughts

Be aware of every thought: try to turn them into something absolutely positive. Like for example: ‘I am not going to fight with my husband today’ into ‘I love my husband and we are going to have a great time today’.

Light meditation

Start doing a light meditation in which you radiate a huge light from your heart, which extends each time a little bit more. Fill your whole body with the light, the room your in, the house, the city… light everything and everybody in your surroundings. Your family, friends, and also the persons you don’t really like. You’ll see a huge difference within a couple of weeks: you’ll be surrounded by good people, positive experiences and loving actions.

Yoga

Once you are aware of your thoughts you can start the process of Jnana, Karma and Bhakti Yoga, in which you start to self reflect deeply. Jnana means knowledge and wisdom. With Jnana Yoga and self reflection, you get to know your true self. Evaluate every thought and action. Become conscious of what you think, feel and do. Then turn them into something positive, that is called Karma Yoga. You clean the energy with right action and positive patterns. If you like to drink coffee in the morning with an unhealthy snack, make a new healthy pattern with a nice smoothie and a piece of whole grain spelt-bread (for example).

Mantra

If you have a hard time changing a pattern, you can start doing a mantra every time you think: ‘I want that coffee!’ Aum namah shivaya is the perfect mantra for that, but you can also choose another one. When you fill your thoughts with the divine energy of mantra’s, there will be no room for those negative, lowering thoughts. Divine energy of light thoughts fills your mind with complete bliss.

Asana and pranayama

Best thing is to support the affirmations, meditation and mantra by doing the asanas and pranayama. This is actually the goal of every yoga practice: clean our inner energy. The asanas are a strong physical detox, which cleans us on an energetic level too. With pranayama we can clean our inner energy prana, with the right breathing exercises: this is a very strong and direct way to detox our energetic bodies intensively. You can ask your yoga teacher to help with that. Every morning between 4.00 and 8.00 AM is the best time to do sadhana (spiritual practice) as in meditation, pranayama and asana. The energy is bright, fresh and divine at that time.

Happiness and love are to be found within

Eventually you’ll see that love and happiness are only to be found within and you can reach them with this cleansing process! Once you become light from the inside, you merge with the light of the higher energy: Moksha. The goal of every living being

Namasté.

]]>IMG_4925janayitribrahmandaAre you living your dharma?https://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/10/03/are-you-living-your-dharma/
Wed, 03 Oct 2018 10:19:47 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5303More Are you living your dharma?]]>We can reach our dharma by following our talents. Dharma is the special goal in life that the higher energy has in mind for you. Our personal talents are like tools we get from birth to be able to live our dharma. All unique individual dharma is in line with the universal dharma to bring love into the world. Because love is God. And we are all one body of love in which we have to promote love, so that everybody only sees love, thinks love, acts out of love and speaks lovingly. Only when we become pure love we can merge with the higher energy of love, because particles of the same attract.

So our goal in life is to bring love, but everybody has a different task like our own cells in our body have different jobs to do. That is with us exactly the same: we are like cells that form a huge divine body. And we are all important, every little cell.

Unfortunately we were not all stimulated in our lives to follow our talents. Many outside influences like family, friends, school and circumstances form us in our early years. Educators mostly were used to teach children what they thought in their minds what was best for them, but never really followed their hearts in which they let the children do what they felt like doing. The classical example is the talented child that could play the violin beautifully but became a lawyer because then he could provide better money for his own family.

There is nothing wrong with doing a job like that: but you also have to follow your talents and play the violin, because your dharma has something to do with that. Only God knows what that exactly is, but following your talents will eventually give you the insides of your dharma. If you never follow them, you will never know what your life job would have been, than your life has not reached the goal that the higher energy had planned for you. This happens a lot. It is the reason why many of us get a burnout or different types of physical and mental diseases: once we follow our dharma those symptoms disappear and we feel happy and healthy again. This is the way God is guiding us: we just have to learn to listen to those signs.

Dharma is certainly not only playing the violin and do nice things in life and forget the universal dharma: we always have the duty to do the right thing; to help society, to do service for others and to bring love to everybody. That is also part of our dharma, but your personal dharma is deeper, and you can only find out what that is by communicating with the divine energy inside of you (the subconscious, our intuition, the love in our hearts).

It helps to ask yourselves some deep questions like: ‘Am I living my dharma?’ ‘Is what I am doing right now in line with my talents?’ ‘Does the thing I do makes me feel happy inside? Does it give me energy?’ ‘Is the thing I dedicate my life to, the right thing?’ and ‘Is this what God has had in mind for me?’ With the first step you take on your unique path to your dharma to bring love and do the right thing in life by following your personal talents, you will feel God’s grace and absolute bliss and happiness!

]]>FullSizeRender3janayitribrahmandaThe amazing healing powers of Ashwagandahttps://janayitribrahmanda.blog/2018/09/28/the-amazing-healing-powers-of-ashwaganda/
Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:00:35 +0000http://janayitribrahmanda.blog/?p=5292More The amazing healing powers of Ashwaganda]]>A lot of beautiful natural remedies we unknowingly have in our kitchen or garden. Like Hippocrates, founder of modern medicine said: ‘Our food is our medicine, our medicine our food’. The Yoga Lifestyle and Sattvic diet recommends to eat as natural as possible and that also concerns our medicine.

Ayurveda is a beautiful natural healing method of over 10.000 years old and first described in the Atarva Veda.

Since a couple of years I am only using natural home remedies and of course Ayurvedic medicines. The most impressive ones for me are the Shatavari and Ashwaganda. Shatavari is known as the female remedie that is rejuvenating our reproductive system. It is often taken in combination with the Ashwaganda.

Ashwaganda is one of most important medicinal herbs known in Ayurveda. In Sanskrit ‘ashwagandha’ means “the smell of a horse,” indicating that the herb has the power, potency and strength of a horse.

Ashwaganda is a very strong and special medicine that heals us on a deeper cellular level. If someone has suffered from disease a longer period of time or had to take strong chemical medicine like chemotherapy, this herb helps restoring every single cell in the body.

It is almost unbelievable how amazing it works on body, mind and soul: when our bodies are strengthened this effective, our minds become stronger too, which builds character to controle our thoughts and senses more easily (which is according to the Bhagavad Gita the key to a happy life).

The potential of Ashwaganda is unlimited. It helps reducing stress, depression and anxiety. Taking Ashwaganda for a longer period of time, helps to become more calm and balanced: you sleep better, deeper and calmer, therefor you’ll have more energy during the day and it prevents every type of illness.

It is also proven that Ashwaganda can heal cancer by generating reactive oxygen species, which are toxic to cancer cells but not to normal cells. Above all Ashwaganda reduces tumor growth and it takes away inflammation. It lowers cholesterol, it stimulates the brain function, it lowers blood sugar levels and it rejuvenates. Taking Ashwaganda balances the entire hormone system, including thyroids and adrenals (with amazing effect on cortisol levels). It is very good for the skin and it strengthens our immune system.

Ashwaganda is known as a miracle medicine, because a lot of the chemical medicines haven’t reached her potential. Scientific research has shown improvements with cancer, diabetes, depression, thyroid disorders, hormonal imbalances, rheumatism, skin disorders and stress related diseases. It does not always show immediate results, so it is advisable to take the medicine at least half a year to see the deeper effect on body and mind. Every herb that works on such a deep and strong level takes time and patience, but the result is phenomenal.

And last but not least an important reminder: An Ayurvedic specialist can help you best with the right advice concerning Ayurvedic medicines, diet and lifestyle: healing is not just taking a medicine, it concerns taking good care of body, mind and soul. Living a healthy Yoga Lifestyle is just as important as taking the right medicine!

Drinking two or three times a day hot water with pieces of fresh ginger is not only delicious: it is super healthy! Ginger has great healing qualities and it can even give great benefits while suffering from cancer.

For myself it became an absolute indispensable part of my daily yoga-diet, because it keeps my thyroid in balance. When I cannot take it, my energy-level gets down immediately and I get cold hands and feet. No wonder that in the ancient Ayurveda and Yoga Lifestyle, ginger is seen as a very important medicine.

We can find everything in nature, even the most complicated medicines. Ginger helps with a sore throat, the flu, stomach and bowel problems, nausea, thyroid problems, menstruation problems (takes away menstruation pain!) and it has a strong antibacterial effect. The tea of fresh ginger burns surplus fat and helps the body detoxify vigorously.

If you would like to loose some weight or if you want to start to live the Sattvic Yoga Lifestyle, it would be advisable to clean the body first with a home treatment of eating only raw food for a week, and drinking a lot of water and fresh ginger tea. You’ll see that your body is going to detox big time and all kinds of waste comes out through the skin, lungs, bladder and intestines (which is not always very comfortable). It is like loosing all kinds of toxins that came into the body through all those years of bad eating habits, horrible drinking habits, pollution and chemicals in the air, water and soil.

When you clean the body, the mind will also become brighter, with happier and more beautiful thoughts. This gives an instant feeling of love, inner peace and bliss. That is where the Yoga Lifestyle is all about!

If you would like to see an extended detox program you can read this former blog.

First prepare some whole grain spelt couscous. In the meanwhile stir-fry cabbage and celery in coconut oil with just a little bit of Himalaya-salt. Grill the falafel with pieces of egg-plant in a grill-pan.

It is very easy to make falafel: just put the pre-boiled chickpeas with flower, salt, cumin powder, chili and fresh parsley in a food processor and make small balls of the mass. Bake them in coconut oil or grill them.

Serve this dish with lime, fresh cucumber and a yoghurt sauce: mix good quality organic yoghurt with vegan mayonaise, green herbs and salt or organic broth-powder. Of course all ingredients within the yoga-diet are organic, but with these you have to be specially careful if they are truly natural without any chemical adds.

This bowl has crispy veggies and raw veggies and lots of vitamins and minerals. It is light, healthy, prana-rich and very nutritious. Bon a petit!